[UE4] Uncharted 4 - Libertalia environment
polycounter lvl 3
------- CURRENT PROGRESS -------
------- ORIGINAL POST ---------
Hey all, ever since I finished my last environment I've wanted to do something completely different. It landed on something heavily inspired by Libertalia from Uncharted 4. This environment is my own design, but extremely inspired by the one from Uncharted 4. I will also make it playable as a 3rd person character, with LODs for most models, a distant scenery etc to hopefully make it look like it could belong in the game Uncharted 4.
I've been doing pre-production for this environment for a while now, doing some art tests, workflow practice etc as well as blocking down a ton of different versions until I finally found one that works for me.
I'm gonna be using this thread to document my progress as I go, and want to start off by showing my blockout with a paintover.
Through the process I would love to get some c&c from you guys, as this is my final project for university, and I really want to push myself to make this the best it can be.
------- ORIGINAL POST ---------
Hey all, ever since I finished my last environment I've wanted to do something completely different. It landed on something heavily inspired by Libertalia from Uncharted 4. This environment is my own design, but extremely inspired by the one from Uncharted 4. I will also make it playable as a 3rd person character, with LODs for most models, a distant scenery etc to hopefully make it look like it could belong in the game Uncharted 4.
I've been doing pre-production for this environment for a while now, doing some art tests, workflow practice etc as well as blocking down a ton of different versions until I finally found one that works for me.
I'm gonna be using this thread to document my progress as I go, and want to start off by showing my blockout with a paintover.
Through the process I would love to get some c&c from you guys, as this is my final project for university, and I really want to push myself to make this the best it can be.
Replies
I first built a pretty basic and simple tower, building only the unique architecture it needed, I then made a few modular pieces I could use for this and some other houses later on. This way I won't spend too long on one building, since I can make a pretty simple unique mesh, and just dress it in modular pieces. From looking at wireframes and Maya screenshots it looks like this is what Naughty Dog did in Uncharted 4 as well, but I might be wrong!
After having gotten the main shape down and dressed it in the modular roof pieces, I started making textures. I made an old wood texture in Substance Designer and used Bitmap2Material for the moss. The stone bricks is not my texture, it's one I got from Textures.com, but I will make my own when I fully start on the project, this was just to save time.
I then created some vine meshes to place around the tower to make it look more overgrown.
I made some window shutters, tweaked a few materials and colors and this is how the tower turned out. I spent about 4 days making this tower from start to finish, while still figuring out the workflow. It really helped me to do this test, as I could find flaws in my pipeline early on in the project and snuff those out.
@Benvox2 Thanks mate! Yeah happy with how the layout turned out, at least compared to the first version haha.
Got a few images of the vines. The polycount is a bit high I think, but I'm gonna add LOD version for it as well now, so it should not gonna affect the FPS all that much even with the amount of vines used.
The leaves look huge though compared to that doorway.
Keep up the progress.
Thanks man! Yeah I'm gonna redo everything when the project starts, as this was just pre-prod art test, so I won't rush through it like I did with this one. Will definitely keep the foliage size etc in mind when making the new version, thanks!
The material foundation is good, my only critique is to be aware of just how much color is used in Uncharted 4 materials, and any game materials for that matter.
Don't shy away from dipping into some saturation/complementary coloring(either now or later in UE4) even for the more generic tiling materials. The reason Uncharted 4 looks so great is everything shares similar color harmonies.
Rogelio has great material breakdowns on his artstation:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OPwvw
You can see even in his Albedos, there is a nice range of color without overstepping any contrast issues.
I'm excited to see this project through, keep up the great work!
@RustySpannerz Thanks! Yeah I love Uncharted myself, so making this environment is pretty fun so far!
Been working on modeling the higher res version of the environment, but I take breaks from it now and then to texture and trying to nail the look of one of the buildings. So far I've pretty much completed this house as far as I can now without having to make the foliage and props.
I've used Quixel Suite for the stone and wood, and Substance Designer for the plaster layer.
Still kicking it away at this one. Got the basic buildings in now, but still no props or anything of detail in yet. Most textures are still placeholders and will be changed.
@Benvox2 Yeah, sculpted the landscape in Unreal, need to make a lot of custom meshes to make it look good though.
These last couple of weeks Ive been working on landscape textures as well as foliage. First time making foliage from scratch, so it takes a while, but Im learning some nice workflows and getting better and faster each time!
Ignore the ugly lighting and buildings haha
Final progress shots of the week:
@KingKellogg Thanks, I really appreciate it! I think I'm going to release a version you can use with VR, would be cool to walk around in it.
Did some work on the backdrop last night. Still need a lot of work, but its a decent start I think.
Did some more landscape work, got some lowpoly buildings in there as well now.
Finally got around to taking some more screenshots. Done a lot since last time!
i liked the foliage cards technique, will consider this for very far lod and the need of fill areas propperly
@RustySpannerz That's such a huge compliment! Thanks man!
although one thing that popped out to me was these dark outlines, they aren't too noticeable though unless you look closely
@ziikutv Thanks!
@Doxturtle Thanks man
Lacking motivation to wrap this up, so I took some shots of the foliage and props I've made for the project.